Providence Children’s Academy is proud to be one of Florida’s preschool providers – we offer Voluntary Prekindergarten or VPK, a helpful step in the beginning of your child’s education. The years your child spends at school are important and if they receive a strong foundation in the early years the easier they will find school later on. VPK is a brilliant opportunity for foundation skills such as pre-math, pre-reading, language and coping in social situations.
If your child is given the opportunity at a young age to attend a Preschool they will learn more easily when they eventually go to school. In a child’s early years their brain is developing at a rapid rate, and learning so many new things constantly. This is exactly when they need to be exposed to the basic levels of subjects that they will learn later on.
VPK is offered for FREE in Florida for children that are 4 years old on or before the 1st of September. The program consists of 540 hours of teaching, starting in the fall and takes one school year to complete. Only highly qualified teachers are on the team, providing your child with only the best education. At Providence Children’s Academy, our VPK program focuses mainly on literacy, social skills, reading and writing and follows the guidelines of the Department of Education This is to ensure that your child is completely comfortable in a learning environment and well equipped when they go to Kindergarten.
Children attending VPK are more likely to be successful at kindergarten and have a smoother transition than children attending kindergarten straight from home. The transition is smoother because they have already had an opportunity to be exposed to an environment influenced by both peers and teachers. Another benefit of VPK is that the teacher student ratio is limited to one teacher for every eleven children, thus making it possible for each child to get enough quality teaching time. Not only are the children prepared intellectually but also emotionally to deal with school.
As a parent, you are not required to enroll your child into the VPK program, however they do need to be ready for assessment within the first 30 days of kindergarten. Doing the VPK course, your child will be a lot more likely to pass the kindergarten assessment, as well as find the integration from kindergarten to school a lot easier. Make sure the school you send your child to knows that they attended VPK – this is to ensure that the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener (FKRS) is coordinated with your child’s school.
So, get to it this September and get your child to attend Providence Children’s Academy VPK, it is one of the best things you can do for your child’s future!